Random October Sunset
Over where my mama stay at, her house is facing a big ass field that was until recently populated with trees. Those trees served as welcome shade from the hot ass Sun in the summer and the full brunt of what Chicagoans know as “The Hawk” in the winter. They were a welcome member of the neighborhood that protected the block from Mother Nature’s nasty ass attitude and were a neverending supply of branches to our backyard fires.
Recently, public works chopped down all those trees…and my mama hates it.
At first, I could see why. Zero trees or any sort of plant life other than grass (and not the smokeable kind) left a huge ass barren field and literally nothing in the way to block the sky. This meant that storms from the east would have a field day at f/cking up my mom & stepdad’s property. It also meant that the setting Sun would slowly rotisserize (that a word?) them both in the summer.
But then I was over at her house and went outside to be with one with some grass (the smokeable kind) and thanks to that grass, I realized how beautiful that open sky was — we were just focused on the wrong gawd damn thing.
There was beauty in the grapefruit colored sky that was filled with little blips of different aircraft leaving or heading to Midway or O’Hare airports. To the left, I saw the moon shining hard as f/ck and lookin’ like a straight G, and next to that was a bright star that I later discovered was actually the planet Venus with her sexy ass.
In that moment, I thought about life and our purpose and wondered why the f/ck we are here. Spinning off of that thought, I wondered how anyone could possibly think the Earth is flat when everything in the damn universe seemingly was not? Somehow, weed-induced curiosity all tied together and made me realize that we are here to experience sh/t, dawg.
I mean, life is not that complicated: Earth is the world’s greatest sandbox.
What we experience is a matter of perspective. And if my mama views the absence of those trees as a problem, then that's what her reality will be — a mthafckin problem. However, if I view it as an opportunity to appreciate the amazing ass sunset, then it’s exactly that. It just depends on how you look it at.
I think we all tend to confuse the idea of creating our reality as always some sort of physical incarnation where people like me can just will Rice Krispy Treats into existence. But creating our reality is about controlling how we realize our current perspective. Life is what you make it because life is how you look at it. I owe that peace of mind to that random ass October sunset the other day.
